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Peter Virdee sentenced

Peter Virdee sentenced to more than three years in prison for his role in carbon credit VAT fraud

Posted on 4 January 20227 April 2022

By Chris Lang

Peter Singh Virdee has been sentenced to more than three years in prison. According to a report in the German magazine The Spiegel, a Frankfurt am Main court sentenced Virdee to three years and three months for serious tax evasion. Virdee was part of a scam involving VAT fraud and the sale of carbon credits.

Peter Virdee sentenced

Peter Virdee sentenced

The Spiegel reports that the Frankfurt am Main court issued the judgment against Virdee on 16 December 2021. The judgment was not made public and The Spiegel reported the sentence one week later.

Virdee’s confession to his role in the carousel VAT fraud, and voluntary “reparation payments” amounting to €3.9 million, played a role in the sentencing, The Spiegel reports.

According to The Spiegel Virdee was at one point one of the most wanted men in Europe. He tried to keep his identity hidden and was known as “Batman”. Virdee was a donor to the UK Conservative Party. Between 2011 and 2017, his firm B&S Properties gave £98,000 to the Tories.

Carousel VAT fraud

REDD-Monitor has written about VAT fraud involving carbon credits several times since 2016. The first post came after the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Frankfurt am Main issued a wanted poster for three men who were suspected of being involved in money laundering and tax evasion involving carbon credits. One of the men, Mohsin Salya, worked for a company called Lösungen 360 GmbH, a firm registered in Frankfurt in 2009. The company became one of Deutsche Bank’s top trading partners in carbon credits – after six years of investigation, Deutsche Bank repaid €145 million in lost VAT to the German state:

Peter Virdee sentenced

A few weeks after this post, REDD-Monitor received an email from Aadiel Salya, who worked for the Salya Group. Aadiel Salya was concerned about the mention of Mohsin Salya in REDD-Monitor’s post. He told me that I had “wrongfully written” the post and Aadiel Salya was keen to see the post removed “with the upmost urgency”:

Peter Virdee sentenced

In June 2016, Mohsin Salya turned himself in to the authorities in Germany. In November 2016, a court in Frankfurt am Main sentenced Salya to three years and three months in prison for “serious tax evasion”.

In January 2017, police arrested Peter Singh Virdee at Heathrow airport. Virdee was accused of fraud and €125 million in unpaid VAT on sales of carbon credits. He faced extradition to Germany and a possible 15-year sentence. Virdee denied any wrong-doing:

Peter Virdee sentenced

Predictably enough, REDD-Monitor heard from Mohsin Salya’s solicitors – as did investigative journalist Andrew Penman at The Mirror. The solicitors told me that, “This information is outdated since months”.

I wrote a post about this in March 2017, by which time the Lancashire Post had reported that Aadiel Salya had been “found guilty of conspiracy to defraud after being linked to Preston-based company Replacemycar Ltd”:

Peter Virdee sentenced

Peter Virdee’s German lawyers successfully challenged the arrest warrant against Virdee that was issued by the court in Frankfurt am Main. The extradition proceedings against Virdee fell away.

But the German authorities had tapped Virdee’s phone as part of their investigations into the suspected VAT fraud. The phone calls became public as the result of a hearing involving Virdee at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. The phone calls reveal Virdee talking about making payments to high level Caribbean politicians:

Peter Virdee sentenced

In February 2020, prosecutors in Frankfurt am Main announced they were once again seeking the arrest of Peter Virdee:

Peter Virdee sentenced

In June 2019, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that Mohsin Salya and another man, Imran Yakub Ahmed, were detailed in thousands of leaked documents from the UK tax authorities and prosecutors from across Europe.

Reports by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Sunday Times suggest links with terrorism. Both Salya and Ahmed deny any such links. The Sunday Times reports that a 2003 HMRC internal report, based on information found on a laptop in Afghanistan, states that,

“We are clearly dealing with a highly organised and sophisticated group of Asian individuals who appear to be operating a massive MTIC [missing trader] fraud.” . . . [T]he money was “mainly transferred onto Pakistan but also Hong Kong and Dubai, and is most likely to be linked to terrorism”.

In 2017, Ahmed was convicted of carousel VAT fraud in Italy and was given a two-year suspended sentence. He lives a luxurious lifestyle in Dubai from where he runs a multi-million pound property portfolio. Salya served half his sentence and also lives in Dubai, “seemingly surrounded by wealth”, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism writes. Pictures on Salya’s Instagram account showed him driving a car with a custom designed Hermès interior and sitting on top of a Cadillac SUV.

 

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9 thoughts on “Peter Virdee sentenced to more than three years in prison for his role in carbon credit VAT fraud”

  1. harrisonjamieie says:
    4 January 2022 at 5:07 pm

    Barstards!! Rot in hell!!

  2. roaman says:
    6 January 2022 at 7:47 pm

    In 2016, another individual involved in a carbon credits scam was jailed. Known commonly to many as unclesaff:

    Extract from Mirror.co.uk:

    “Mohammad Gohir, originally from Huddersfield, West Yorks, before moving to Dubai, and now he’s moved to a jail in Frankfurt.

    The 58-year-old was last week sentenced to eight years, with German prosecutors describing him as “the Pope” of EU tax fraud, having stolen an estimated £160million.”

    I think this was a separate carbon credit case altogether?

    I think Virdee and Gohir must know each other either through boxer Amir Khan or Sahil Peerzada as these individuals have been photographed together and with Virdee and Gohir?

    Sahil Peerzada
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2149033/CBI-sniffing-gold-jewellery-export-scam-link-Peerzada.html

  3. Chris Lang says:
    6 January 2022 at 11:14 pm

    @roaman – There’s a photo of Mohammad Gohir and David Cameron at the 2012 Olympics in that Mirror article.

    Wait! Who is that grey-haired woman photographed with David Cameron and with Peter Virdee?

  4. Party says:
    10 January 2022 at 10:58 pm

    Fake news, he is partying like hell, I saw h last night

  5. Party says:
    12 January 2022 at 4:13 pm

    I saw him last night meaning MPSV

  6. Chris Lang says:
    12 January 2022 at 4:43 pm

    @Party – The article in The Spiegel dated 23 December 2021, states that Virdee has been sentenced to three years in prison. It states that, “According to SPIEGEL information, Singh is currently back in Great Britain before he has to start his prison sentence.” The article does not say when the prison sentence begins.

    What does MPSV mean, by the way?

  7. Punjabi Warriors says:
    28 February 2022 at 12:15 pm

    Errrr must be a funny prison as he is out and about, seen him at least twice a week lol

  8. Butter Chicken says:
    7 April 2022 at 10:11 pm

    The Times recently printed an article after their investigation. Turn out:

    “Virdee was first jailed in 1995: he was sentenced at Birmingham crown court to nine months for deception, attempted deception and theft.”

    The fraudster was at court in Germany to hear his sentence on six charges of aggravated tax evasion but is waiting to be taken into custody.

    “The implementation of the sentence has not yet begun because the files of the criminal proceedings are still at the Frankfurt am Main regional court,” German prosecutors said yesterday. He has allegedly been seen at a Sikh temple in Notting Hill in recent weeks and his Instagram account suggests that he attended a concert this month at the Royal Albert Hall.

  9. Chris Lang says:
    7 April 2022 at 11:33 pm

    @Butter Chicken – Thanks! Here’s the link to The Times article.

    In a leading article also dated 22 March 2022, The Times writes,

    Astonishingly, Mr Virdee, a property developer and solar energy entrepreneur, was already a convicted criminal when the Conservative Party first took money from him in 2011. In 1995 he was jailed for deception, attempted deception and theft. Worse, it continued to receive donations from him even in 2018. By then he had been arrested at Heathrow under a German warrant, suspected of involvement in a £100 million international VAT fraud, and later in 2017 by the National Crime Agency on suspicion of trying to bribe Commonwealth politicians. He has now been sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in Germany.

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